Goya - Hardcover

Licht, Fred; Goya, Francisco

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0789207273 ISBN 13: 9780789207272

Publisher: Abbeville Press, 2001

Synopsis

Richly illustrated and filled with new information, this updated version of the great Spanish artist uses nearly 300 full color illustrations to retrace GoyaÆs life and career, organizing his life into the various genres and mediums in which he worked.

About this title

About the Author

Fred Licht is curator at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. He has taught at Princeton University, Williams College, and Brown University.

Reviews

The tempestuous works of Spanish painter Francisco Goya (b.1746) set him far apart from his European contemporaries. He is best known for his ability to get away with subtly mocking the bourgeoisie, something most brilliantly accomplished in his notorious "Family of Charles V." The painter was a witness to the ferociously bloody resistance by the Spanish during France's occupation, which greatly influenced his work, and he was also afflicted by an illness that robbed him of his hearing. Goya went on to produce some of the most grotesque, capricious, and chilling images in the history of Western art with his "Black Paintings" series. This well-structured book includes hundreds of cropped and full-framed color reproductions of Goya's oeuvre. In the highly analytical text, Licht, curator for the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice, investigates and contextualizes specific eras of the artist's life, ranging from the satirical graphic art of "The Caprichos" to his group portraits, his tapestries, religious paintings, and eventually the "Black Paintings." In his section on the Majas (self-assured Madrilene ladies), Licht disputes the widespread speculation that the woman depicted in Goya's most scandalous paintings, "The Naked Maja" and "The Clothed Maja," was not society lady the Marquesa de Alba (with whom Goya has also been romantically linked) but rather an unknown woman. Licht's ability to see Goya's life and works from the contemporary perspective of modern art and culture, rather than from that of a classic art historian or technical observer, makes for a psychoanalytical and insightful study. Recommended for libraries with large collections on European painters. Adriana Lopez, "Cr¡ticas"
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Abbeville Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0789207273
• ISBN 13: 9780789207272
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 360